This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate
lawyers in the United States. Unlike most high-skilled professions, the legal profession
has widely-used objective methods to measure and reward lawyers’ productivity: the
number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new-client revenue generated. We
find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both
measures. Male lawyers bill ten-percent more hours and bring in more than double the
new-client revenue. We show that the differential impact across genders in the presence
of young children and the differences in aspirations to become a law-firm partner
account for a large part of the difference in performance. These performance gaps have
important consequences for gender gaps in earnings. While individual and firm
characteristics explain up to 50 percent of earnings gap, the inclusion of performance
measures explains most of the remainder.
Presented by:
Ghazala Azmat (Queen Mary, University of London)
Date & time:
April 22, 2013 3:00 pm
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